Facebook should offer PewDiePie an exclusive

YouTube’s biggest star is embroiled in a scandal, but it’s good news for Facebook.

YouTube’s biggest star, Pew Die Pie is currently embattled in the midst of controversy. Not the good kind of hype-building controversial news storm; the bad, reputation ruining. Allegations surrounding the use of anti-Semitism leading Disney and YouTube to pull deals with him. You can read more about it at the gaming website Kotaku.

But all is not lost.

There is one company out there that could benefit; Facebook. If the biggest social network on the planet has their wits about them, they’ll meet with the Swedish gaming star and discuss original content for their platform; Facebook have made it clear they wish to pursue original content, think Facebook TV (read more at TechCrunch).

Of course, this would all need to be done with enough time and distance between this current scandal so as not to tar Facebook with the same brush. His Facebook page has a whopping 7m fans, despite it not being given much love. His page’s feed is mainly auto-uploads from YouTube, there’s nothing original or exciting there; It’s being used as a broadcast medium to push his videos out. All it needs is a bit of preening and an original content strategy to give his fan base something new that they wouldn’t get on YouTube.

The bigger he gets on Facebook, the more Facebook benefits.

We’re already consuming 100m hours of video a day on Facebook (Recode), but our viewing habits are piecemeal. Increasing PewDiePew’s prominence on the network would make it more of a destination like Amazon Prime or YouTube currently is.

But there could be a bigger win to be had here for Facebook. It would cement their credibility in being the top-destinations for social and online videos. If Facebook made their intentions clear and opened their wallet to YouTube’s biggest celebrity, other content creators could start to follow suit.

Words by Karel Kumar

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